


A Date to Keep Wherever You Go

by shiphitsthefan



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Asexual Castiel, Biblical References, Bisexual Dean Winchester, Getting Back Together, M/M, Past Lisa Braeden/Dean Winchester, Profound Bond, Religious Content, Season/Series 06, Soulless Sam Winchester
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-18
Updated: 2015-09-18
Packaged: 2018-04-21 10:35:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,993
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4825856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shiphitsthefan/pseuds/shiphitsthefan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean still hasn't forgiven Cas for deserting him at Stull, even if he does understand why.  Castiel wanted him to have a chance at happiness and a normal life, but Dean would have rather had him.</p><p>"If you but ask me to stay," Castiel tells him, "then I promise you I will never leave again.”</p><p>Dean can’t ask Cas, shouldn’t <i>dare</i> to ask Cas, but he’s going to anyway.</p><p>* * *<br/><i>A story about reunion and renewal in celebration of seven years of Castiel and a more profound bond.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	A Date to Keep Wherever You Go

**Author's Note:**

> I completely forgot how very important September 18th was until I got on Twitter this morning. Determined to celebrate in any way possible, I sat down and wrote this. Thank Chuck for a toddler that still observes nap time.
> 
> This is set in canon in early season six, circa [Weekend at Bobby's](http://www.supernaturalwiki.com/index.php?title=6.04_Weekend_at_Bobby%27s). I don't know if that took place around September 18th or not, but the canon timeline's a bit wibbly-wobbly anyway. After all, season six aired in 2010 but technically took place in 2011. The Impala is secretly the TARDIS.
> 
> Many thanks to [viscouslover](http://archiveofourown.org/users/viscouslover/pseuds/viscouslover/works) for betaing in a pinch. I didn't plan on writing a ficlet today. (Speaking of, don't expect me to post two fics in two days ever again; this is an absolute anomaly.)
> 
> Please do not repost/copy/duplicate this work to other sites. That's called theft.

Sam and Dean are on their way to deal with the largest potential ghost population they have ever heard of, but all Dean has on his mind is Cas.  He’s been flighty as fuck and unfriendly as hell as of late.  Dean knows it’s because Cas is fighting a celestial civil war and is being pulled in more directions than one wavelength could possibly handle, never mind the physics, which are likely almost as complicated as the situation.

“Dean,” Sam snaps from the passenger seat.

Alright, but not nearly as complicated as the situation with Sam.

_“Dean.”_

“What?”

“I asked you a question.”

“Well,” Dean starts.  “Good for you.  Glad to see you’re still irritatingly inquisitive.”

Sam fakes a look of shock.  “I’d have thought four syllables was more than you could handle in one word.”

“Shut the fuck up, Sam.”

“I could,” Sam begins, “except you refuse to listen to me and, seeing as we’re on our way to a hunt and we need to talk tactics, it might be nice if you’d pay attention.”

Dean snorts.  “That might involve talking to you.”

“I’m serious, Dean.  We’re going to Wheatlands Plantation.  In case you’ve forgotten, eight people died in a house fire and someone murdered their father—a death, I might add, which left an irremovable blood stain on the floor.  There’s a cemetery on the property and, oh yeah, _a mass grave for thirty indigenous people in the backyard.”_

“Thought we could use a challenge,” says Dean with a shrug.

“The real challenge is apparently getting you to focus,” Sam says in a huff.

“It’s just—”  Dean sighs and stops, uncertain if he actually wants to discuss this with the cold, calculating dick that his post-Hell brother’s turned into.  “Man, it’s Cas.”

“What about him?”

“We don’t see him for days, and suddenly he’s all up in our business,” Dean says, darting his eyes over to Sam and then back to the road, his hands squeezing the steering wheel a little more tightly.  “He’s shown up off and on all day.  Popped up standing at the foot of my bed with a pie before I woke up, so who fucking _knows_ how long he’d been there.”

“Creeps me out,” Sam mumbles.

“He shows up while we’re filling the tank to tell me how much he _appreciates_ me.”  Dean looks back over at Sam and repeats in disbelief, “Appreciates me.”

“Can you keep your eyes on the road, please?  I’m really surprised you’ve not gotten us in a wreck given how much you avoid looking at it.”

“We open the trunk three hours ago,” Dean continues, ignoring Sam, “and there’s my favorite beer, which I sure as hell didn’t buy, so Santa Cas must have left it.  I wanna know what the fuck’s going on.”

A few minutes pass before Sam asks, “You have no idea what today is, do you?”

Dean blinks and pulls a hand off the steering wheel to run through his hair as he tries to remember.  “Uh.  Saturday?”

“It’s September 18th.”

“And?”

Sam stares at him incredulously before slapping him upside the head.

“Ow!” shouts Dean as he smacks Sam’s hand away.  “What the fuck was that for?”

“Because you’re an idiot.”

“Why?”

“I mean, I could list off a shit ton of reasons, but let’s stick with the here and now.  Today’s the day you met Cas.”

Dean starts counting off on his fingers.  “2011, 2010, 2009—no no _no,”_ asserts Dean, shaking his finger at Sam, “today is the day I got to dig myself out of my own goddamn grave.  Not worth celebrating.  I met Cas on the 20th.  Two days from now.”

Sam wrinkles his nose in confusion.  “So then why is Cas—”

“The day we actually met cannot be recorded on any human calendar, so I picked one I believed to be suitable,” rumbles Castiel from the back of the car, causing Dean to jump in his seat.

“Jesus, Cas,” says Dean, “fuckin’ _warn_ a guy.”

“My apologies.”

“What did you pick a date for, anyway?”

There’s a pause before Sam hits him again.

“OW!”

“You’re such an asshole,” Sam tells him.

“Oh, okay, I, the person not hitting people, am the asshole.  Right.  Good to know.”

“It’s your anniversary, Dean!”

He hits the brakes wide-eyed and comes to an abrupt stop in the middle of the road.

“Is that a joke?”

“I made no attempt at levity,” Castiel says quietly.

Dean glances in the rearview mirror and meets a pair of saddened blue eyes.

“You left me,” Dean reminds him.  “You left me at Stull, and I went back to Lisa.  You broke up with me in the worst of ways, and you expect me to celebrate a day you’ve suddenly decided is our anniversary?”

“I thought we’d moved past that.”

Dean rubs his face with both hands.  Maybe if he rubs hard enough, he’ll disappear and it won’t matter that the love of his life who abandoned him when he needed him most still thinks they’re an item.

“Maybe you have,” he finally says, “But I haven’t.”

And it’s a lie.  It’s one of the biggest lies he’s ever told, because Dean understood all too well why Cas left him.  He thought he was doing him a favor, giving him a chance at a semi-normal life.  Understanding doesn’t make it hurt any less.  It doesn’t make Dean want to forgive him.

He loves Cas still, but Dean’s so tired of people leaving.

“I never did,” Castiel tells him, nearly whispering.  “I watched over you.  I _longed_ for you.  I wanted you to be happy.  I knew it couldn’t be with me.”

“Yeah,” says Dean, “I was happy.  But I would have rather had you.”

Silence fills the car for several long, agonizing minutes before Sam breaks it.  “This is all very touching, I’m sure, but could we postpone the soap opera?  We have a date with unsettled spirits, and if I’m going to die, I want it to be from a hunt and not from unbridled angst, thanks.”

Castiel squints and frowns angrily at Sam.  The sounds of ruffled feathers fills the Impala as Castiel disappears.

“I hope they beat the shit out of you,” Dean says, and he pushes the gas pedal all the way to the floor.

 

* * *

 

It’s the least eventful hunt they’ve ever had.  There are only six ghosts—the four little girls who died in the house fire, an old woman who spends all of her unlife sitting under a tree, and the father who was murdered.  Every single one of them is completely amenable with moving on, especially the kids; apparently, haunting a museum is intensely boring.

The salting and burning goes by the book, Sam doesn’t get beat up at all, and Dean is immensely dissatisfied with the whole experience.

When they reach the hotel, Sam insists on getting separate rooms.  “You two work through your issues,” he tells Dean, “and leave me out of it.”

Now, Dean’s sitting on the end of his bed, still dirty from digging up bones and not giving two shits about it.  He wants to—no, _needs_ to talk to Cas, but the wound’s still too fresh.  It hurts more knowing Cas was there the whole time, watching him drink through the first few months, bearing witness to him going through the motions of suburban residency.  He cared for Ben and Lisa—still does—but he’s done the same as Cas; left them behind to move on with their lives, to have a future they deserve.

Dean doesn’t really care what everyone else thinks he deserves or doesn’t warrant anymore.  He just wants his angel back by his side where he belongs.  Dean wants to wake up to Cas, not standing at the end of the bed shifting from foot to foot, not knowing what to do, but to him propped up in bed beside him one one elbow, having spent the night watching him sleep.  He wants to have gone to sleep the night before with Cas running his fingers through his hair, or kissing him until he was drowsy and heavy-limbed.

It was nice, having a sex life again, but Dean doesn’t especially care about that, either.  He’s got a hand.  What he doesn’t have is Cas.

Dean puts his head in his hands and prays like he hasn’t done in months, when he finally stopped calling out to Cas, figuring he was no longer listening.

Castiel is there immediately, pulling Dean into his arms, burying his face in Dean’s hair, murmuring, “I’m sorry,” and, “I’m so sorry,” and, “I thought I was doing the right thing.”

“I _needed_ you,” Dean chokes out, beating his fist against Cas’ chest.  “I needed you.”

“Never again,” Castiel promises, lying the side of his face on top of Dean’s head.  “I’ll never leave you again.”

“Bullshit,” says Dean.  “You’ve got a war in heaven.  Ain’t got time for this.”

“Dean,” Castiel implores.  He grabs both sides of Dean’s face.  “Dean, please, look at me.”

He does, stares right into Cas’ eyes, and it’s like looking in a starfield; gazing into a galaxy; watching the creation of an unknown universe.  It’s beautiful and mesmerizing and terrifying and awful like everything the Old Testament promised.  Dean wonders, not for the first time, if this is how Jacob felt, looking up his ladder, watching heaven descend and call him blessed.

“I watched the birth of the world, saw the darkness banished from the water and the land rise from the bottom of the ocean, new and green, and I have never loved any shade of it more than the color I find in your eyes.  I saw the world perish and die and be born anew, and nothing has ever broken me like your death, taken my breath away like that which I breathed back into you.  I have stood a silent sentinel for the emergence of civilization, for the dawn of knowledge and wisdom and culture, and there will never be any greater mystery to me than you.

“I am in awe of a righteous man, Dean.  I would fall for you; live for you; die for you.  There is no thing, no person, no Divine that I cherish more.  Do not doubt my devotion.  If you but ask me to stay, then I promise you I will never leave.”

Dean’s face is a crumpled mess.  He feels the tears tracking down through the dirt, the grime, the dust of the earth on his face.  His hands clutch Cas’ face, already worn and calloused, no longer perfect as he made them.

This is a terrible idea, because he can’t ask Cas to give up the fight in heaven.  That would only serve to reboot the apocalypse, and Dean’s already seen one future he can’t bear to revisit.  The next iteration could only be worse.

Dean can’t ask Cas, shouldn’t _dare_ to ask Cas, but he’s going to anyway.

 _“Stay,”_ he begs in a broken voice, and he swallows Cas’ vow in his mouth, captures it with his lips.  Castiel surges to meet him, grasps the back of his head with one hand, rough and claiming; the other smooths the mud from Dean’s skin with a touch.  It’s gentle.  Worshipful.  His fingertips linger, and the tension from heavy labor melts from Dean’s body.

It doesn’t fix the ache in his heart, could never be an immediate balm to the pain of their past, but it is anointment.  Cas’ grace sings in his soul, and it’s all the peace of coming home.

No, the eighteenth of September is not the date they met on the mortal plane.

It’s the date they started over.

  
  
_“Know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land; for I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.”—Genesis 28:15 (NRSV)_

 

**Author's Note:**

> This is also [crossposted to Tumblr](http://shiphitsthefan.tumblr.com/post/129379521089/a-date-to-keep-wherever-you-go); if you enjoyed the fic, I would greatly appreciate your reblogging it.
> 
> You can find me on my [Tumblr](http://shiphitsthefan.tumblr.com/). I also chirp occasionally witty things on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/shiphitsthefan).
> 
> Kudos and comments validate my existence. <3


End file.
